Fossil Blog

Deb dropped me off at my little hidey-hole near Thedford. She would have joined me, but it was far too hot: about 30 C, but pushing 40 C with the humidity and heat bouncing off the rock. But I kept well hydrated and moved a lot of rock to find some modest Widder Fm treasures. About 6 hours of slabbing and splitting leaving me a bit sore at the end. Thankfully, I took just enough water to keep me hydrated.

Spirifers are very common here, and can come to dominate certain layers. It functions to tell me where I am in the Widder, as it is a game of inches. If there are plenty of spirifers, I am either too high or too low from the productive trilobite layer. Thousands of these can be had, and many of them pop out of the rock easily. I snapped a picture of this one as it was fairly large.

Clusters such as these are also present. They don't pop out as cleanly, though.

Spirifers with the long wing tips are slightly more uncommon, but not rare. What is rare, however, is them appearing intact because the tips are very delicate. This one I had to keep.

Cephalopods. On the left is a pyritized nautiloid that could use a bit of clean-up; to the right, a Tornoceras with a lovely pyrite sheen. On occasion they can come out inflated, but this one is pretty flattened.

Trilobite moults of Greenops widderensis are very common. Hundreds of cephalon and pygidium fragments are scattered throughout the layers. In this case, whenever you see a thorax, there is a higher probability that it is complete. Sadly, this one is missing half its tail shell so I left it behind.

Next to the bivalve is another possibly complete trilobite buried in matrix, but missing its right eye. The shell is very thin and delicate, and the nature of the shale does not regularly split along bedding planes. They only rarely come out fully exposed, and more commonly (in the uncommon event of finding a full prone!) appear partially buried or dividing its shell between the positive and negative halves. Not always the best laminations!

The real purpose of my trip is to bag full trilobites. This one is partially buried in matrix, and I'll likely update this post once I have a chance to prep it out. It is complete... except for just a tiny bit of genal spine missing on its left side. And it is very small (about 1.5 cm). This would be my find of the day.

I took a break by the water where there are some outcrops of Hungry Hollow Member. Peering right back at me was this beat up Eldredgeops rana roller. Pity it isn't in good shape, but the rollers are not always the easiest to find here.

Fiddling a bit in the Hungry Hollow Members, I didn't find much else. This image is simply to indicate just how dominated by corals this Member can be. As I have enough coral, I didn't bother taking it home. I hope to go back this weekend and have another go looking for more trilobites. Until then!

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Kane Faucher

I've been an amateur fossil hobbyist since I was a wee boy in short pants. This is what I'd do all the time if I could retire early.

I mostly collect within my region, with rocks that are predominantly Devonian in age. My collecting specializes in trilobites, but I also tend to pick up other interesting fossils along the way.

I am also a member and moderator at The Fossil Forum, one of the largest online discussion boards dedicated to all things fossils on the Internet. I am also a member of the Hamburg Natural History Society.

Please note: I am not a palaeontologist, but a passionate collector. There will no doubt be errors in some of my posts, and so anything identified or discussed here should be considered a "best guess" based on my limited exposure to the literature and in consultation with professionals in the field.

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